I may have forgotten but I think a 45 and a 46 are not anything alike. I had a 50T it was very heavy with a 4 cyl. water cooled engine on it. The 46 was a lighter baler with a Wisconsin 2 cyl engine. The 46 was a much faster baler but both had knotters from h**l.

When I was about 12 years,old in the fifties, I learned how to tie a square knot fast while riding on a twine box on a 45 baler. You have to pull both strings to see if they tied and if not, you had to tie fast before the slack was gone. I rode that baler for at least 2 full seasons before we got a New Holland baler. Dusty,dusty and more dusty. Tommy

I agree with the others, skip the 45 and get a 46. My dad a bought a new 45 in 1952. He used it until about 1959 or 60 when he traded it on a new 46. The 45 worked OK but would miss tie bales from time to time. The 46 was a 100% improvement over the 45 as you could go all year without having to hand tie a bale. I still have it and use it for about 50 bales of straw each year. Al

The 45 baler was the first small farmer sized baler IH made. It used the new McCormick style double diameter style knotter. Many people don't grasp the idea that it makes a bow knot, only one twine is cut and the bale pulls the knot off the bill hook. All the deering style knotters cut both twines and strip the knot off the hook with the stripper. The 50T used the Deering style knotter and a very complicated head lowering, driving mechanism. Way too much machinery for the job at hand. The 45 also used way too complex a needle drive system with that huge cam driving the needles. It drove the needles at a different rate of speed depending on the stage of the tying cycle. like I said , far too complex for the job. They did not have the knotters and needles refined enough yet either. They were the first balers I had to work on. Not an easy assignment when you had never worked on any part of a baler before in your life. The 46 was a much more refined unit but still lacked the little extras on the knotters for overall performance. When they added the twine end retainer springs and the adjustable tapered cord holder drive that made all the difference in the world. Just glad I no longer have to contend with balers that don't tie and frustrated farmers using them.

An interesting question about a 45T and a 46.
This is what I remember about a 45 baler, about 1946 or 47. I was about 10 at the time.
I grew up rite across the road from an I H C exp. farm west of Chicago.
The company brought out the first 45 made , an expermental model and put it to work baling and finding what was good and bad about it.When they got their hay baled the company guys brought it over to our place to bale our hay. The idea was to get a lot of time on it and find the "weak" spots.
Well there were some spots , the knotters were very troublesome, tying when they felt like it!
That baler was at dads place for a few weeks with the engineers and designers working on it almost daily.
They even baled straw from our straw stack. Dad and several others had to pitch the straw into the 45. Not a hard job , as the baler did not have much capacity and it was shut down often for repairs and changes.
That baler was to sell for around $650 to $ 750.It seems to me that it was priced about $ 900 when it came on the market a year or two latter.
We had several other Mc Cormick machines at dads farm from the exp. farm over the years. It was very interesting. clint

Ditto the comments on the 45. Low capacity, but didn't matter much, as many ties as it missed. After the first couple of day of use, I only had it long enough to find something to trade it in on.

Knew a dairy farmer who bought one new, and finally installed a seat on it for his wife to ride and tie the missed knots. He sold about a million bucks worth of timber in mid 70's, first thing he did was went to town and bought a brand new baler. I asked him if he was going to put a seat on it for the Mrs. She would have taken a frying pan to me if she'd had one handy.

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